Immediate And Delayed Effects Of Word Frequency And Word Strokes On Eye Movements In Chinese Reading

Word frequency and word strokes are the base attributes of characters, and they are important factors on lexical processing of Chinese. Researchers have always focused on the effect of strokes and its relationship with frequency when exploring the unit of Chinese processing. However, whether the effect of strokes and also its relationship with frequency on lexical decision and naming task are consisted with those on reading conditon need to be proved furtherly. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the effects of both frequency and strokes and their interaction relationship (the immediate and also the delayed effects) using eye tracking.Three experiments were conducted in present study:There were33graduate students taking part in Experiment1. It was a2(frequency:high frequency and low frequency)×2(strokes:more strokes and less strokes) within-subject design. It was designed to examine the effects of word frequency and strokes and their relationship in traditional lexical processing task by recording participants’reaction time and accuracy of judgment.There were40undergraduate students taking part in Experiment2. We made sentences using these single-character words of experiment1, so it was also a2(frequency:high frequency and low frequency)×2(strokes:more strokes and less strokes) within-subject design. We wanted to investigate how word frequency and strokes affected lexical processing in real reading situation by eye-tracking.In Experiment3, there were48participants all of whom were college students. The target words in experiment3were two-character words. We manipulated their frequency (frequency:high frequency or low frequency) and strokes (strokes:more strokes or less strokes), while we controlled the frequency and strokes of the following words. We also used eye-tracking, in order to explore the immediate effects of word frequency and word strokes and also their interaction deeply in sentence reading.From the results and the analysis, we concluded that:(1) Word frequency played a key and promoting role in lexical processing in sentence reading, moreover, the effects was continued on the following words n+1.(2) Word strokes had a large influence on skipping. There was a positive effect of strokes on high frequency condition (for single-character words) while there was a reversed effect of strokes on low frequency condition (both for single-character words and two-character words). The reversed effect of word strokes was mainly on the later stage of lexical processing, and this was continued on word n+1(the reversed strokes effect).(3) Word frequency and word strokes were not separate from each other but modulated with each other, and therefore had an interaction. The interaction occurred on postlexical processing, and was significant on word n+1:frequency (delayed) effect was more significant on less strokes condition, while the reversed (delayed) strokes effect was more obvious on low-frequency condition.(4) The findings of the delayed frequency effect and the reversed strokes effect supported the E-Z Reader model.